Ecologyfund.com
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[edit] Summary of function
Ecologyfund.com is a click-to-donate site which is owned and operated by the Hunger Site Network and which was originally founded by Tim Kunin and Greg Hesterberg. It gives money to save natural habitats in South America (Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina), Central America (Mexico), Scotland, Tanzania, Canada, and the United States. Money is also donated towards reducing pollution. As of January 2007, the fund claims to have saved 45,082.3 acres (70 miles²) of land and removed 21,207,936 lbs of carbon dioxide.
[edit] Importance
During the late-1990s and early-2000s there were many click-to-donate sites, but during the dot-com crash of the early-2000s most of them closed. EcologyFund was one of the survivors, and as of 2006 is still a very popular way to save land for free with thousands of people clicking each day.
[edit] How this particular "click to donate" website operates
Ecologyfund.com works using the advertisements for various companies which act as "sponsors" as well as being in partnership with a number of conservation charities which buy imperiled ecosystem land around the world. On the website there are 3 buttons which you can click on to save " x square feet of land"( the amount is different per location but constant for each) land in various places. Once you have clicked an icon, for instance " save 35 square feet of rainforest land, you are taken to a page thanking you for saving x amount of land and on this page you see the advertisements of the sponsor businesses/companies. The website then uses the total number of unique hits that they get in a day per page for each project as a basis on which to charge these advertisers -They can however, only count one click, per project, per person a day-
However, ecologyfund.com as an enterprise does not receive these cheques, instead they ensure that the businesses make them out directly to the conservation charities which buy threatened wilderness land (You can see to which organisations the money generated by your clicks will go to if you look at the bottom of the respective "save land buttons" on the websites front page or by exploring the "about" section of the website.) Thus, using this website, the larger the number of people clicking once a day on this website, the more money the businesses advertising there are charged, thus the more money the conservation charities receive to buy threatened land. As well as icons you can click to "save land" you can also click to plant trees in Mexico and reduce greenhouse gas pollution via similar sorts of financial arrangement.
- Obviously given the nature of the scheme, enterprises advertising as "sponsors" for the various projects on the website tend to be environmentally friendly or even directly built on sustainable business practices, as it would be hypocrisy for the owners of the website to accept them if they destroyed the natural world they are trying to protect.
[edit] Extra incentives to click to donate on this site
As well as simply being a site which allows you to effectively make free donations towards conservation (as explained above), arguably one of the reasons ecologyfund.com is so popular and thus successful is that they offer a number of extra incentives for people to click;
- There are counters they provide which chart increases over time in the amount of wilderness land saved. These work on a collective basis for all people clicking but more significantly, they also work on an individual basis, as if you register with the site they will keep a running count of the total area of land you have saved (in square feet, acres and hectares respectively).
- Individuals who click on ecologyfund.com can join specific "groups". There are 10 different categories for the hundreds of different groups that exist, such as "environmental organizations", "colleges and universities" and "clubs and fans". Every member of a group who clicks on ecologyfund.com contributes to a collective "group total" of land saved- this figure being the sum running total of land that all members of the group have together saved (measured in square feet). Joining and clicking in groups can generate increased feelings of satisfaction with the visible evidence (as group totals climb each day)of what large numbers of people can do when they are united in working towards the common goal of protecting our natural environment. Friendly competition between groups is also generated , which encourages those in groups to click more often as well as to encourage them to recruit other people to become fellow members.
- There is an "honour roll" which provides recognition of individual's "donations" by listing their names in various categories according to how much land they have personally saved- GREEN=half an acre, YELLOW= 1 acre, BLUE= 2 acres, RED= 5 acres and ORANGE= 6-9 acres.
[edit] External link
- Ecologyfund.com - Note: There is a Wikipedia group that you can join when you register.
